Divination
Divination was a branch of magic used to gain insights into the future. About Those who study divination have to use their concentration and interpretation skills to analyse Signs and deduce an insight into the future. Clearing your Inner Eye so that you can See by relaxing your conscious mind and physical eyes, was key to getting into your superconscious. A branch of divination was fortune-telling that could be done in various ways, including palmistry and crystal balls. It encouraged intuition, rather than logical thinking and calculation by using numbers (e.g. what they do in Arithmancy). Another branch of divination was used by centaurs but their ways were not understood by humans. There were several kinds of omens, good and bad. The worst of these was a Sign you were going die , called the Grim? Having a strong Aura and perception was important to your success at divination. Known books about the subject included: Death Omens: What to Do When You Know the Worst Is Coming, and Unfogging the Future. Seers include Cassandra Vablatsky and Sybill Trelawney. Human divination A true Seer was rare and had a natural talent for using their Inner Eye to actually see into the future, interpret what happened and could even give a Prophecy. Learned Seers have better success at seeing into the future. If you don't have an Inner Eye, you were a non-Seer. Studying it will take you so far, but you will never truly see into the future. A non-Seer was limited. A non-Seer could however be taught how to develop an understanding of and how gain insights into the future. A subject at Hogwarts School was an elective which could be chosen for study in the third-year. Hermione Granger was very untalented at divination because she doubted how authentic it was. She was negative in Divination lessons and Professor Trelawney told her she had very little aura and perception. Learned witches and wizards viewed the subject in scepticism because it wasn't based in clear and proven logic. Professor McGonagall called it an "imprecise branch of magic", Hermione Granger called it "woolly" and guesswork" and Professor Dumbledore was leaning towards scrapping the subject at Hogwarts School before finding Sybill Trelawney. Centaur divination Centaurs were very gifted in divination and had their own ways of divining the future, usually centred around the observing and placement of planets and stars. They have done it their own way for centuries, including burning certain herbs including sage and mallowsweet, and looking for various shapes and symbols in a fume. It would take a centaur years and years of studying until they were competent, but thought it was foolish to have too much confidence in their insights because even they could be wrong. Their findings led centaurs to conclude you could find the future in the skies above, but it could take even ten years to be certain of what they See. Centaurs tended to have a very low opinion of human divination. Firenze called it "self-flattering nonsense" and berated their tendency to focus on day-to-day insights because they were "blinkered and fettered by the limitations of their kind". He thought they were rarely ever any good at it, and was unconcerned when he taught a Divination lesson to a student he found to be incompetent. Branches Notes and sources Category:Branches of magic